1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image projection method, and a device manufacturing method for manufacturing various kinds of devices, such as IC's (integrated circuits), LSI's (large-scale integrated circuits), CCD's (charge-coupled devices), liquid-crystal panels, magnetic heads and the like, using the image projection method.
2. Description of the Related Art
High integration of semiconductor devices, such as IC's, LSI's or the like, has increased rapidly, and the corresponding fine processing technique for processing semiconductor wafers has developed remarkably. In the projection exposure technique, which is an essential component of the fine processing technique, a current goal is to improve resolution so that an image having dimensions equal to or less than 0.5 .mu.m can be formed.
In order to improve resolution, consideration has been given to a method of increasing the numerical aperture (NA) of a projection optical system and a method of shortening the wavelength of exposure light. However, since there are limitations to the amount of improvement possible with both of the above-described methods, a new method of improving resolution is needed.